China Bans Ping Pong Domains (No Joke)

Glenn Cowan discovered Ping Pong when his father brought home a table as a present. Soon thereafter, Glenn was racking up victories in national tournaments and kept his home full of trophies. Cowan’s defining moment came in 1971 during the 31st World Table Tennis Championships when he represented the United States.

Cowan happened to miss a team bus one afternoon. He found himself stuck in the training area when a Chinese player invited him onto the Chinese bus instead. Despite frosty U.S.-China relations, a short 15 minute bus ride, and a language barrier, Cowan struck up a friendship with a Chinese player, Zhuang Zedong. Zedong and Cowan even exchanged gifts and were bombarded by media coverage of this “Ping Pong Diplomacy.”

The friendliness between Zedong and Cowan led to an invitation of the entire U.S. table tennis team to China, which was a tremendous milestone given that Americans were categorically denied access to China at that time. In hindsight, Ping Pong had a large role in easing U.S.-China tensions.

Fast forwarding to today, Ping Pong is still immensely popular in China, but when it comes to domains, the sport no longer plays a unifying role. Rather, registrars list table tennis as a banned type of .cn name:

The .CN registry does not allow the registration of any domains that refer to the following:

Olympics
Pornography
Gambling
Prostitution
China’s Government
Table Tennis

This is funny but also frightening. If Olympics, governmental and table tennis .cn names could be banned, are your .cn purchases truly safe from deletion?